What happens when you decide to bring tens of thousands of Catholics together to celebrate the Eucharist? Quite a lot.
For those readers not on Facebook, and so not privy to my “reports” from the 10th National Eucharistic Congress (the Congress), and in response to a couple requests for the following, I thought I would relay my thoughts about the Congress here and expand on them as well since I've had time at home to process a bit. First...
My Confession
I am not “in to” conferences. I get why they can be good, and I understand that there are certain personality types who just love being with large crowds of people. I’m not one of them, personality-wise. But apart from that, I’ve seen conferences (religious and secular) born of good intentions flop nonetheless, leaving me with the observation: this money could have been spent on something else.
Now add to that personal tick the fact that a little less than a year ago I made the acquaintance of one of the organizers of the Congress. Over a meal, he confided in me the many problems behind the scenes, the bad decisions, the poor planning. Plans and prices had already been announced when we talked. Many were scandalized by the price tag for the conference and the hotels. There were other problems, of course. After the Congress was over, I was rather surprised how many of my friends, some of whom were more "in the know" than I, were likewise skeptical.
Now add also that in April of 2023, I was invited to be a speaker for a deacon track at the Congress. As we got closer to the actual event, I became aware of several problems first hand as hotel rooms were promised, then provided, then revoked, then provided again, then changed. Contact persons would reach out then "disappear." It was not encouraging. And so when people kept asking me before the Congress “are you getting excited?” I had my various answers, but the truth was that I wasn’t . It was four days away from my family, at a crucial time of year for the Evangelium Institute, and I’m not a “big conferences” kind of guy. But then...
Day One
I arrived. Here’s what I wrote after that first day, and posted on Facebook.
1. My Uber driver was born in India and came to the U.S. in 1984. He's from the North, Punjab region, and he went to Catholic school. We have a global Church.
2. Surveying the long, long, long lines the diversity of the Church struck me. Young (lots of young people here), old, many different races, many different religious orders, several languages spoken. We have a global Church.
3. At the main event (see pic), all the pilgrims from the four paths of Eucharist procession across the U.S. arrived and were announced on the big screens. Everyone cheered. Everyone was joyful. Everyone! No division. No anger. We have more of a unified Church than we might believe.
4. I prayed my Evening Prayer there, overlooking the huge crowd of 50,000. And one of the petitions in the Breviary was this: "May those who confess your holy name be united in your truth, and fervent in your love." It brought tears to my eyes. We have more of a unified Church than we might believe.
We have a global and united Church. We don't often see it. We don't often hear it. We don't often FEEL it. But She's there. That's what I saw yesterday. God be praised.
Now, I did not go to the conference intending to write anything. I took a rare selfie at the airport announcing that I was on my way for reasons I didn’t even know. But the experience I had at that opening session, when all the four pilgrimages arrived was... well, was what I said it was above. It brought me to tears.
The response I got on Facebook took me by surprise, too. Friends back in Omaha and from around the country started sharing my post with others. The news that there was something special going on started to get out. Why was there such a response? Why were people so eager to hear how things were going? More on that later.
Day Two
Apart from the massive turnout of people, I was soon struck by how well organized things were. Yes, there were problems, and – arguably – significant ones. Specifically, about the registration process. But there were signs at the airport, there were signs throughout the city and around the convention center. There was a gigantic crucifix! It all created an atmosphere of unapologetically Catholic zeal. This is how I expressed it after the second day:
Our presence here is not subtle. So, I have been pleased to hear snippets of conversations by pilgrims explaining the faith to security guards, locals on the street, stadium staff. Our people are taking advantage to proclaim Christ. For instance men and women religious in habits with bullhorns welcoming pilgrims and talking about the centrality of the Eucharist is fire.
And friends started posting there on Facebook their own experiences of encounter with locals and random visitors to the city. Other pilgrims noted the same thing on their social media feeds. One person said his Uber driver – a Hindu – wanted to attend the next one. But that second-day post was really just a quick observation. I really wanted to share my thoughts about something else.
Day Three
One of the things that so impressed me about the organization of the conference was what I can only now describe as the way that a Catholic imagination penetrated so much of everything. For instance, though I didn’t learn this until after the conference, backstage, behind the lights and professional sound system, and while speakers were giving their talks, and the emcees were doing their things, and while musicians were firing-up the crowd,
there was a small chapel in which Jesus was adored by religious sisters praying for the speakers and the attendees.
That means that the organizers at some point thought out loud, “Hey, why don’t we include intercessory prayer as part of this thing.” That’s what I mean. That happens only if you have a Catholic imagination, if you're steeped in a Catholic world-view. And they also had the forethought to say, "Hey, why don’t we partner with a charitable organization to help feed the hungry." So they did. This is what I wrote – in part – on that third day on Facebook:
So I've been struck deeply by the commitment of the organizers to not just pay lip service to this truth but to do something about it. They've partnered with the Million Meal Movement to pack 360,000 meals for the homeless and poor. The image here shows the many hands from all ages and walks of life that have been working EVERY SINGLE DAY making meals.
But wait there's more...
Even if the commentariat wants to say that the organizers are just checking a box, I've repeatedly seen pilgrims - mostly young people - sitting and visiting with the homeless. I overheard a snippet of a conversation of one lady telling her story to a young man. I saw another instance of a homeless person saying "Thank you. Pray for me." to a pilgrim who was getting up from sitting next to her. Those are just two instances of what I've witnessed. I've heard others.
It's not just that the poor are being fed. They are being encountered; they are being loved; they are being seen; they are being embraced. I've SEEN it.
Friends, this is the Church. This is what the Eucharist does. This is the Gospel alive. God be praised.
Now this was a post that I felt needed to be made because there was incessant griping from what I called earlier in the post “some corners of the Catholic commentariat.” That corner said that “this is all a distraction from the real purpose of the Church which is social justice, care for the poor, socio-economic change. Basically, stop talking about the Eucharist all the time if you're not going to DO something.” As someone who takes the social teaching seriously, and who was called upon to incorporate the social teaching for the deacon track, this pre-complaint bothered me to now end, and so the great success of the conference in this regard needed to be said. After all:
What I found sad about the commentary is that all the saints... I mean like ALL of them make clear that their work for the poor, for social change, for a better world is always the fruit of their love of Christ and particularly of the Eucharist. I love to quote Servant of God Dorothy Day on this point. She said "The Mass is the work." She saw the connection.
I discovered after having wrote this that Dorothy Day’s granddaughter was at the Congress!
As with the previous post, friends started posting images of the same things I saw. Repeatedly, Catholics were not just passing by the homeless but encountering them. Loving
them. Embracing them. A friend posted how she saw Dominican sisters bringing a homeless man up to the exposed monstrance at St. John the Evangelist Church. He was clearly uncomfortable, but the sisters would have none of his timidity. They encouraged and encouraged, and he came there... and he knelt... and he wept - like I am writing this right now - at encountering Jesus.
Day Four
Finally, something started to dawn on me. The Congress was a living expression of what Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI had been teaching for decades. Many of the speakers were of my generation (Gen X), the post Vatican II generation that grew up with the liturgical experimentations that left us underwhelmed or scandalized, and with priests and bishops who openly dissented from Church teaching, and the "Spirit of Vatican II" Church. So, many of us from that generation went to Franciscan University of Steubenville or one of the handful of other orthodox colleges that existed then, and went out to do ministry in parishes, schools, chanceries all over the country as priests, religious, deacons, families.
But while many of the speakers and leaders were of my generation, so many of the attendees, and still many other speakers and leaders were of the next generation (Millennials), who never experienced what we did and who sometimes wonder why we had such a chip on our shoulders. They didn't have friends kicked out of seminary because they wanted to pray the rosary. They grew up in a Church that was, from my perspective, much more healthy than the one I did.
In short, what dawned on me is that this Congress was the incarnation of the Spring Time that Pope St. John Paul II said would be coming, the spring time that many well-meaning Catholics denied was possible.
About a year ago, while teaching a class on the Church and speaking specifically about Vatican II, a student lamented out loud “well, too bad Vatican II just didn’t work. There was no renewal. There was no spring time.” Her implication, and the implication of so many from that other corner of the Catholic commentariat is that we need to just give up on Vatican II and go back to the pre-conciliar Church. Here’s how I put in on Facebook:
…for them, nothing good can come from “the bishops,” nothing good can come from the post-Vatican II, Missal of Paul VI, Novus Ordo Church.
This week I got an email from a friend. He was forwarding an article from one of those corners. It was a typical write-up about how bad the Church is. Also during this last week, there was a separate trad conference near Indianapolis that included at least one priest who openly claims that Pope Francis isn’t Pope. During this week, one of the members of the commentariat tweeted (I’m still going to call it that) tweeted out his contention that “the bishops” just don’t understand how to encourage faith in the Eucharist.
The truth is that what happened in Indianapolis over the last four days is nothing short of a massive triumph, specifically of the post-Vatican II, Missal of Paul VI, Novus Ordo Church that was led by Pope St. John Paul II for so long. It was a triumph of and for “the bishops” who - having been formed and inspired by JPII - have been raising up and ordaining priests who came out in droves for this thing, priests some of whom will be the future version of “the bishops” everyone likes to criticize.
And now for a full confession: I say this as someone who was very skeptical of this event. People kept saying to me before I left, “are you getting excited?” I wasn’t. I thought it was going to be a bit of a flop. I thought it was going to be just another “initiative” with good intentions but little effect. I was wrong. This has changed hearts, my own included. There were important conversations, important dreamings, important awarenesses this week.
Remember that Spring Time that JPII predicted? It is here, and it is yet to come. It is growing, and it has yet to start in some places. But the Spring Time is real. This was the event. It was like JPII’s visit in 1993 for World Youth Day. That was an inflection point in the American Church that shaped my generation. So was this.
I meant and still mean every word of that. This National Eucharistic Congress was important and relevant in a way I didn’t think the Church in the U.S. could be anymore. I was very blessed to be able to witness it and blessed to be a speaker, thanks to Our Sunday Visitor and the outstanding program they put together for deacons. More on that some other time, maybe.
Next Steps?
They announced at the end that there will be an 11th National Eucharistic Congress in 2033, if not sooner. In fact, I have it on good authority that it will be sooner as this Congress was such a massive success. However, something tells me that whatever the next one brings it cannot have the same character as this one. That’s because of the following, my final thought on the Congress.
One of the things I think the Congress revealed was just how much those of us who are “plugged in” to the Church, to Church news, Church politics, and Church intrigue, how much we’ve been functioning under a kind of cloud about things going on in the Church. Readers have to understand that some of us of the “JPII generation" were truly hopeful for the Church and saw a lot of good things happening, but then… the long Lent of 2001 happened. The sex abuse scandals, and the cover ups, and the inept responses, and then the hope that we had gotten past it all only to have McCarrick come up again, and then recent years, where, for reasons I won’t go into here, there has been a massive increase in numbers and influence from the anti-Vatican II crowd, the crowd that argues not that Vatican II was good but poorly implemented, but the crowd that believes it was a mistake by naïve prelates a best or a triumph of the Church’s enemies at worst. They literally want things to go backward. One commentator wrote something to the effect of "providing for wider use of the TLM will do more for Eucharistic devotion than 1,000 such Congresses." This fellow was not at the Congress by the way.
Anyway, so many Catholics who are plugged in and especially those in ministry, myself included, have felt like we’re walking through a "the swamp of sadness" - remember the scene from The Neverending Story (1984)? We’re making progress, but it’s all just so difficult.
This Congress changed the way I view the present Church in the U.S. and so the way I will view the future of the Church in the U.S., the way I view ministry. It has given me the hope I haven’t had since I was younger and zealous. This Congress will and has already borne fruit for us all. God be praised.
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